Archive for the ‘Business Analysis’ Category
Friday, May 24th, 2013
I have this question constantly coming back to me and kept playing in my mind time and again. What makes a great product? What is it that creates successful brand, organisation or an individual? After thinking about it from all possible experiences and view points, I finally came to a conclusion. The answer came to my mind when I applied myself to various scenarios, situations,industries and domains. Yes, I found the answer!!! It is balance. I would like to use this connotation of balance to bring forth the importance of IMAGINEERING in our professional and personal lives. In this post, I wish to bring to you the meaning and potential of IMAGINEERING, as a run-up to Texavi’s upcoming conference IMAGINEERING – INDIA, 2013 in August this year.
Imagination is a natural instinct
They say that “Imagination takes you everywhere!”, how true! Yes, with the very mind that we have we can create and weave bundles of thoughts. These indeed can take us places and sitting in London, we can go to Miami or Mumbai. Of course, this same imagination makes us travel across time as well, from the present to the past and lets us dream peep into the future too, in the form of dreams. This greatest power especially found in abundance in young children, is responsible to make us curious, enthusiastic, inquisitive and exciting. This adds the much-needed zing to our lives, which otherwise gets mundane and monotonous. Though not entirely related, imagination could be mapped to the emotional part of the human instincts.
Logic is critical for growth
But then the next question could be “is imagination everything that you need?”. Well, the answer to this question is a resounding “NO”. It is important to have imagination, but its not just enough. We need logic to back up the emotional appeal, analysis should be the engine that should drive the vehicle forward. Intellect powers the development of human beings and it is the constant churning of WHY and HOW that leads us in the right path to reach the right goal quickly. Its logic that lends support to the otherwise fragile and weak facade of imagination. I would even say that logic and analytical bent of mind provides the string and controls the high-flying kite of imagination.
Imagineering – the true meaning
Having looked at both imagination and logic, by now you would agree with me that we need to make the best of both worlds. To get it right with anything in the world, from building a product to a creating a powerful brand, and from taking an individual from good to great, we need to strike the right balance between balance between imagination and engineering. In the context of developing successful products and services, imagineering, as I refer to it, could be the powerful combination of technology and business. Whereas in the case of building a brand, balance should be between identity and image of that brand. And in the case of an individual’s personality development, what helps the most is the right balance between left and right brains, or rather harmony between heart and mind.
Why is Imagineering powerful
Simply put, if we take a case of a problem and solution, we need to balance imagination with engineering and that’s what I would refer to as Imagineering, a powerful combination of creativity and logic. I didn’t coin this term though, but found out that this terms was copyrighted by Disney. What one needs today in the world of me-too products is the clear differentiation whose value-add can be clearly seen by your customers and users. While both are equally important to create any product or solution, sometimes Imagination precedes Engineering while in other times vice-versa. What is more important and more prioritised between the two of these, depends on the factors like…
- Stage in the life cycle
- Availability of resources
- Personality and/or mental makeup of the people concerned
- Business drivers
Digital. Mobile.Agile.Social times
There have been umpteen instances in our careers and personal lives, where the digital, mobile, agile and social aspects have been influencing us either directly or indirectly. These are playing a significant role in the way we live, work, interact, connect and communicate with our customers, family members, friends and followers. I penned my thoughts, views and ideas about the web of influence these 4 themes have on our lives. The diagram below depicts in a sense the various meanings, influences, challenges and opportunities posed by the quartet of Digital, Mobile,Agile and Social.
Texavi’s IMAGINEERING – INDIA, 2013 Conference
I take this opportunity to announce Texavi’s conference IMAGINEERING – INDIA, 2013. The theme for this year’s conference is “Technology trends, challenges and opportunities in the times of Digital. Mobile. Agile. Social”. We have good 3 months for the conference, but Team Texavi have started the planning and preparations are in full swing. We have a fantastic lineup of speakers for the conference, and the agenda has been shaping up pretty nice. I will share more details on the IMAGINEERING – INDIA, 2013 conference in the coming days. As a teaser, I present to you the logo of the IMAGINEERING – INDIA,2013 conference. This logo is the result of the hard work by the team, putting their mind, heart, and soul into creating something splendid and I must say the outcome has been a pleasing experience.
As a run up to the Texavi’s IMAGINEERING – INDIA,2013 conference, I will be writing more posts in the next few weeks. Watch out for more details not just on the conference, but also around the related themes and perhaps some guest posts too. As always, keep writing and share your feedback. Till next time, ciao!
Tags: 2013, agile, analysis, business, Conference, creativity, digital, engineering, event, global, imagination, imagineering, India, innovation, Mobile, Pardha Mantravadi, products, services, social, solutions, texavi, Texavi Innovative Solutions
Posted in Agile Development, Business Analysis, Conference, Events, Information Technology, Innovation, Mobile, Social business, Social Technologies, User Experience, User-centered Design | No Comments »
Tuesday, April 30th, 2013
“There is no Average Joe Bloggs” – reads the copy on the billboard advertisement of an insurance company. I couldn’t agree more with this, especially in the context of designing and developing new products for end users. No matter how much I like Statistics, we just cannot apply it to all things in our personal and professional lives. While its good to be number-savvy, we need to balance the quantitative with qualitative aspects, to get it right. More so in the case of product design and development, the “law of averages” doesn’t quite contribute to the successful product development. We are all familiar with the concept of user profiles and personas used in the design and development of products. These help a great deal in understanding the real needs and goals of your target audience. In this post, I will dwell on why designing for average users is a misconception and how we can make use of user profiles and personas in developing successful products.
All customers are not users
This is the biggest notion among my clients that customers are well, users of the products. Not always true! The good thing is that both customers and users are both people, the similarities end there. I think that “Customers” is a favourite term for Marketers whereas Designers and User Experience professionals connect better with the term “Users”. Customers are the people who purchase your products and services, while consumers or users use these. In some cases or well, most cases customers and consumers are the same. As in the case of some daily use products, white goods, FMCG, customers and users are the same i.e., people who buy your products use them as well. But in the case of high-end products, enterprise applications and productivity solutions, buyers could be different from consumers. For instance, office supplies, financial services, technology products like computers etc., the people who pay are different from those who suggest. These in turn are different from the people who decide and yes, the people who actually use the products or services could be completely different from the above groups.
First, know your Users
Knowing your users is the most important step in the approach to developing great products. By knowing your users, I mean to say that you must understand the goals and needs of the users. This understanding will help you in shaping your product or service, make it more suitable and appealing for the users. You can’t just create a product in thin air and then retro-fit it to the benefit of some people. As they say, the most important question in any business is asking “whose needs is the idea/concept/product going to solve?” . Texavi’s Unified Experience Framework has a whole phase dedicated to help you get to this. The “Know the Needs of your Users” phase has all the tools, techniques and technologies to ensure that we understand the real needs of the users. These are often unwritten, untold, unexpressed and even unknown to the very users. So, its a big challenge to get to the real needs of the users.
User profiling holds the key
It doesn’t make sense to design and develop your products for all the people in the whole world. There is a danger of missing out on most people, as they think it doesn’t suit their specific needs and goals. Also, on the extreme end, it doesn’t make sense to design your products for one or two users. This argument lends weight for some people to think the middle path and rely on the law of averages. So, they think that the best path is to design and develop for average user. But hold on, what is an average user? How can you get to that person and define the characteristics of average user? The answer to this question lies in the user profiles and personas. User profiles are essentially the characteristic grouping of users based on various properties, traits and behaviours. This doesn’t mean that you are defining an average user. Instead, you are trying to understand the essential aspects of your users. Using the profiles and personas helps the team to have a common language of understanding. This not only helps them in having a good picture of the end users, but also gives them a great affinity to the users, because of the name, form and physical characteristics.
Personas – archetypes not stereotypes
You might have heard of the term “persona” used in the context of marketing, research and product design. A persona is a representative user from amongst the group, but does not point to one user from within the group. It is a powerful design tool that helps the design and development teams and client relate to the target audience. Persona is not a stereotype of the users, but rather an archetype from the user group. In a persona, you give a form, a name and a picture to the representative users, so that all the team members and concerned people can relate to that person more effectively and easily.
Benefits of user profiles and personas
While there are many benefits of using the user profiles and personas in the product development life cycle, I list below a few of them that really stand out.
- Understand the real users who you should target from amongst the many people in the population
- Help prioritise the target segments within the groups of people
- Know the real needs and goals of the target audience
- Support in connecting and relating to the real needs of the users
- Design, develop the products in a more practical and pragmatic manner
- Evaluate and test the products, keeping the real users in mind
- Minimise the effort, time and cost of development and rework
Hope you agree with me now that the average user is a myth and acknowledge the power of profiles and personas. Please keep writing in with your suggestions and comments. Till the next post, ciao!
Tags: Consumers, customers, design, development, innovation, Innovative, marketing, Pardha Mantravadi, personas, products, profiles, services, software, solutions, texavi, Texavi Innovative Solutions, Unified Experience Framework, usability, user experience, users, ux
Posted in Behavior Modeling & Design, Business Analysis, Interaction Design, Product Development, Requirements Development, User Analysis, User Experience, User Studies, User-centered Design | 3 Comments »
Thursday, February 28th, 2013
When I talk to my clients about developing great products that offer fantastic User Experience, many of them ask me why, when and how to go about doing it. The most frequently asked question from customers is “what is that one thing that makes or breaks great user experience?”. My consistent response to them has always been one simple word that truly wields the real power. Yes, it is “Consistency”. That is the mantra for creating great products and services that stand the test of time, offering delightful experiences to customers and users! However, this by no means is a quick-fix, short-cut approach to creating successful products and services. In this post, I shall touch upon the important role consistency plays in offering compelling experiences to your customers and users.
Think different, but be consistent
In the constantly changing business and technology landscape that we are living in today, it is imperative that you have to stand out from the competitive me-too products and services in the crowded market place. There is a growing need for businesses and individuals to think and act different. This also works when you wish to develop a new product, concept or idea and especially with the start-ups. It is indeed the hallmark of good startups to be able to think differently from the others to cut the clutter and make their presence felt. However over a period of time, the product or service gets adopted and it gains sufficient market penetration and user acceptance. At that stage, having consistency in presentation and overall experience becomes critical for the long term success of the product.
Consistency – experience and expectations
What does consistency mean in a product development context? Does it mean repetition, cliche and mimicking the same, always and in all ways? No, on the contrary being consistent helps your users to focus on the right areas in your products so that they derive optimal usage experience. Consistency can be seen as an antidote to monotony and often the positives of being consistent far outweighs the negatives of being routine and repetitive. Do not restrict consistency to just one specific product of yours, but broad-basing it across the products in a product line would help your customers and users. Consistency though largely is a broader concept, does vary to some extent based on the users’ culture and geography. The concept of “business” has remained the same all through the centuries. Customers and clients raise a PO (Purchase order) and vendors propose and offer their products /services and then raise an invoice/bill towards the products or services offered. Customers then make payments to vendors against these invoices. This is a consistent way of engaging in business and doesn’t vary from country to country and also does not change with the times.
Sample this as a proof of why I think that consistency is of a great help to delivering great experience. People from across the different parts of the world have been driving cars over the last few decades. There have been a lot of variants like petrol and diesel, differences in engine capacity and volumes. Cars do come in different models, sizes and shapes - sedans, SUVs, hatchbacks and so on. They also differ in the transmissions like manual and automatic. The steering wheel could be on the left or right side of the car, depending on which country you drive. However, no matter where you are driving, what type, model, size or shape of the car, the pedals for brake, clutch and accelerator (also called gas) are always in the same place and in the same order. From left to right, it will be clutch, brake and accelerator and its no doubt that this is what simplifies the driving experience for most of the car drivers in any part of the world. This is just one example of how being consistent helps the users to adopt the products quickly to their context, expectations and experiences formed.
Why be consistent?
Consistency when used in the right manner has the power of giving freedom to your users. It ensures that your users put their focus on the goal rather than the medium. I like to draw an analogy for this with the cinema screen and the projected movie. Consistency in your products is akin to audience watching the movie and enjoying themselves without getting distracted and disillusioned looking at the screen beneath the movie. It makes the experience smooth and lends flow and fluency to what the users look, learn and do within the product.
Let us look at some of the benefits of consistency
- Is shaped on the prior experiences of users
- Helps direct users’ attention
- Sets the expectations of users
- Delivers stability and safety of users, in a few instances
- Aids users in strong brand and product association
Consistency doesn’t kill creativity
Quite a few people think that consistency kills the creativity and new ideas. I would argue that consistency doesn’t affect the innovative or imaginative thinking. Innovative product companies like Apple, Google implement consistency across their entire set of offerings. You can use standards and design principles as the basis for your product. These are the foundation based on which you should architect, design and develop the product. These are often sacrosanct and non-negotiable. Next in the order of priority are guidelines which are like rules of thumb. They are not prescriptive, but provide direction to what should be incorporated and how. But compelling user experience doesn’t stop at this level. Only when you start referring to heuristics and patterns, can the product start delivering delightful and superlative experiences to users. I drew the diagram below to bring out the main points.
How to incorporate consistency
In the context of product development, consistency translates into the overall user experience and not just the superficial visual design. You need to look at all the various dimensions that contribute to the overall experience and delight of users. The following diagram sums up how you can lend your product a consistent experience…
Through the optimal use of consistency, user should be able to feel that he/she knows:
- What I can do with this product
- Where I am now, where I can go from here and how I can go
- Why something works the way it does
- What a particular element means when it is in of a certain colour, shape and size
- How I can press, click, tap an element to get what I want it to do
Hope you find this post helpful. As always, please feel free to drop in your comments to help improve the quality and usability of my blog posts. Until next time, ciao!
Tags: Apple, business, cars, consistency, creativity, customer experience, design, Different, Google, guidelines, heuristics, ID, ideas, innovation, interaction, navigation, Pardha Mantravadi, patterns, presentation, products, services, standards, SUV, technology, texavi, Texavi Innovative Solutions, usability, user experience, ux
Posted in Business Analysis, Information Technology, Innovation, Interaction Design, Product Development, User Experience, User-centered Design | 1 Comment »
Saturday, January 5th, 2013
‘Man is a social animal’, – as human beings, we do have instincts, but we also have emotions, sentiments and experiences. It is these that separate human beings from animals. In our professional and personal lives, we tend to use the right side of our brains as much as our left brains. Or should I say our hearts step into action and not just our minds in almost all our activities and decisions. People’s behaviours and interactions on the social and professional networks are not any different. That’s why it is critical for businesses to listen to the voices of the people and understand the emotional aspects underlying their conversations. This post dwells on how listening (a.k.a social customer care) help businesses to understand not only people’s voices, but also help them with the right solutions.
Listening is an art and science too
I think the two most critical factors that made social media popular are freedom of expression and the ability to go viral in no time. People on the social networks are free to express their views and opinions. Most often these comments tend to be positive or neutral, but occasionally users do express negatively. Also, note that these are not just about the products and services, but also extend to the brands, organisations and people too. Businesses have been realising increasingly that these conversations and comments – positive, negative or neutral, are a great source of improvement. Companies like Dell, Kodak, Lego and Sainsbury’s started actively listening to the customers’ views and opinions on the social and professional networks.
Image credit – Quinn Anya, Flickr
What is listening
Listening in the context of social media refers to the monitoring of the activities, interactions and mentions by users. Also referred to as Social Customer Care, the social media monitoring is one emerging areas invested by most leading brands. The main goal for the monitoring is to understand the activities and derive insights to help take business decisions and help support the customers. Listening does not necessarily mean looking out for the problems alone, but also for potential ideas, insights and innovative approaches. More organisations in private and public sectors are actively engaging with their customers and monitoring what they are up to on various social and professional networks. Small wonder then that today we have some fancy job titles such as CLO (Chief Listening Officer) and Insight Managers.
“Dell has been listening for four years and created a position called ‘Listening Czar’ two years ago. We are a leader in the listening space.”
- Richard Binhammer, Communications Executive, Dell
How does monitoring help businesses
Social media monitoring is not just a passive observation of what’s happening on social networks. It is extremely proactive in trying to identify the problems of people, understand their pain areas and resolve them in the quickest possible manner. Not just the problems, some times analysing the mentions and comments will help businesses with new and fresh ideas for improving their business, products and services. Often these conversations could potentially lead to new features and functionality but also new products. At a macro level, the social media monitoring and listening helps organisations to understand the customers’ “image” and compare it with their “identity”. Also, the mentions and comments on these networks move beyond just products and touch upon the experiences, emotions and feelings. Businesses can now reach out and unearth these, with minimal effort, cost and time. 
Thanks to the explosion of the Internet, mobile phones and social media, individuals and businesses nowadays are facing a big challenge. Information overload, BIG Data or whatever you may call it as, this data deluge is a bane as much as its a boon. Sample the impact of the social media usage and the amount of data its creating, just the “Retweet” button on Twitter is creating a data equivalent to 2 TeraBytes in one day.What should businesses do to overcome this challenge and make use of the data to their advantage to service their customers better? To sift through this data deluge and make some meaningful relations amongst them, businesses have to plan and approach this in a structured manner. Also, they must use the right tools to help them get the best and draw meaningful and actionable insights.
Social customer care tools
Some of the prevalent tools in use today for the social media monitoring are sentiment analysis, NLP (Natural Language Processing). Also, a few statistical tools such as Cluster analysis, Factor analysis are also being used to analyse the variables and dimensions. These and other similar tools and techniques enable us to look at and filter through the BIG data. The objective is to find the patterns, map the relations and draw usable insights from them. The outcomes are qualitative as well as quantitative and will aid businesses to take the right decisions in the right time.
“We get about 300,000 new mentions of Kodak every month and we don’t censor the comments or videos people create about our company.”
- Beth LaPierre, Kodak’s Chief Listening Officer
One important suggestion is to ensure that businesses must not ignore the negative comments or mentions about their brands and products. Instead, they must actively look for them, understand the root causes and step in to resolve the issues. They must also ensure that the problems are addressed to help prevent their re-occurrence in the future.
Hope you find the post useful. As always, feel free to drop in your feedback for continuous improvement. Wishing you all a very Happy New Year 2013. May the new year bring in joy and success to all of you. Until next post, ciao!
Tags: BIG Data, brand, business, CLO, customer, Dell, identity, image, insights, Kodak, Lego, listening, marketing, monitoring, NLP, Pardha Mantravadi, products, Retweet, Sainsburys, Sentiment analysis, services, social business, social customer care, social media, statistics, texavi, Texavi Innovative Solutions, tools, twitter, vision
Posted in Business Analysis, Information Technology, Social business, Social Technologies | No Comments »
Saturday, December 22nd, 2012
For the nth time, I am mentioning this, at the risk of sounding cliched, “User Experience is not the same as Marketing”. This is more true in the context of referring to customer and user research. While some terms and activities such as profiles, personas and interviews do happen to be common to both User Experience, that does not give us a blanket permission to assume that they both are one and the same. The very use of the words “Customers” and “Users” says it all – marketing is all about customers and prospects, whereas User Experience is well, about “users”. The importance of this topic came into the fore once again, thanks to a recent conversation with one of my clients. In this post, I wish to draw the main differences between User Experience and Marketing/Sales. Hope what you read and see below, will help shatter a few myths and misconceptions out there in most people’s minds.
Marketing helps build brands
I am not Philip Kotler to define what Marketing is. However, to my mind, Marketing is about the planning, activities and the outcomes related to understanding the needs of customers. The function of marketing helps organisations to create products, services and offerings to meet the needs of the existing and potential customers. And yes, marketing is about the brand that encompasses Marketing is a function of the 4Ps – Product, Price, Place and Promotion. And of course a fifth P was later added, which stands for Positioning. But I would say why stop at 5Ps? The sixth P that I would add for Marketing is “People”.
User Experience helps create Products
Like Marketing, User Experience is also about people and understanding their needs. However, as the words have it all it is about “users” and usage experience and not customers or prospects. However the focus for UX is on the consumers of the products and services more than anything else. It tries to look at the various elements of the experience such as satisfaction speed of performing the tasks. The 5E model of User Experience focuses on Ease of use, Easy to learn, Effectiveness, Efficiency and Error-free nature of the products and services. Over the years, UX has been catering to products more than services.
Similarities between Marketing and User Experience
While most of the other disciplines help provide the perspectives internal to the organisation. These range from operations, administration, finance and other support processes etc. Whereas Marketing, Sales and User Experience offer an external perspective on the organisation, brand, products and services. Both Marketing and User Experience are cost centres. Both of these rely extensively on quantitative and qualitative data. They use similar tools and techniques such as interviews, discussions, tests, among others. Both can be used to test the concepts, ideas and new products in their early stages. In marketing, you call it as Market Testing or test marketing, whereas in User Experience, we refer to it as User Testing.
Differences in Marketing/Sales and User Experience
I give below a table with the differences between Marketing and User Experience, for your quick reference. After all, its important for me to market my User experience skills 
Hope this post is helpful to you. As always, I welcome your feedback for the improvement of the blog content and coverage.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, 2013! Happy Holidays
Tags: 4Ps, 5Es, brands, Consumers, customers, ease of use, effectiveness, efficiency, innovation, marketing, Organisations, Pardha Mantravadi, Place, Positioning, Price, products, Promotions, services, texavi, Texavi Innovative Solutions, usability, usage, user experience, users, ux
Posted in Business Analysis, Business Case, Information Technology, Product Development, User Experience, User-centered Design | No Comments »
Friday, November 2nd, 2012
This post walks you through with an overview of Texavi, what we do, who we are and where we serve. You will also get to see the core services and offerings, practices and focus areas of Texavi. With this presentation, you will know how we can help you and the benefits for you, working with us.
- Team Texavi
Tags: agile, Apps, behaviour, behaviours, BlackBerry, business analysis, clients, cloud, company, computing, conferences, consulting, Corporate, habits, ICT, India, innovation, iOS, IT, London, media, Microsoft, Mobile, Mumbai, new age, Overview, Pardha Mantravadi, partners, presentation, publishing, retail, social, social business, social media, solutions, STM, Tablet, technology, texavi, Texavi Innovative Solutions, training, UK, usability, user experience, workshops
Posted in Agile Development, Behavior Modeling & Design, Business Analysis, Business Case, Information Technology, Innovation, Interaction Design, Product Development, Social business, Social Technologies, User Experience, User-centered Design | No Comments »
Friday, August 31st, 2012
Businesses, like individuals grow over time, adjusting themselves to the changes, situations, market demands and business drivers. Organisations mature in their processes, improving continually their products, services and operations. Often the maturity happens by doing, learning and unlearning from their own experiences. However, some other times, maturity could come in through vicarious learning i.e., looking and observing at others and their ways of working. This applies equally well to the social businesses which undergo different stages of progression. Social businesses join networks, identify their goals, create and innovate content and engage people. As they mature, the focus shifts from selling their products and services to building their brand. In this post, I will first touch upon the criteria for defining a successful social business and then discuss how you can drive your social efforts with the social business engine.
1. First define the goals and success criteria
In order to become successful, the first step is to identify and define in clear terms, what success means. The definition of “done” and the success criteria have to be specified and agreed upon well in advance. These will help the organisation, team members and also the stakeholders to understand the progress. To be able to understand whether you have reached your goals, you must first define what the goals are. For social businesses, as I mentioned in my previous posts, the goal is to become a people-focused business. This goal translates into the organisation delivering experiences instead of products and services. Success also depends on how well businesses help change the behaviours of their customers and users.
I think social businesses must focus on the following areas, to become successful.
- Brands, not just products and services
- People, not just customers and users
- Experiences, not just engagement and influence
- Habits, not just one time actions
- Insights, not just metrics and analytics
2. Identify the key drivers – People, content and business
There is no doubt that the social business engine powers your social initiative providing the direction and fuel for your social efforts. I view this engine as comprising three main components- people, content and business. The social business hinges on these 3 key components, and they are inter-related among themselves. People contribute and create engaging content, and this content leads conversations to transactions. Yes, its true that social networks are about conversations. But merely engaging people with interactive content does not help businesses become successful at social business. So, a combination of people, content and business working in tandem would help build successful social businesses. No wonder most successful social businesses have got it right with these three components of the social business engine.
3. Invest in people, the true asset to social business
The way organisations manage their relationships with people shift from one level to another, as they get matured in the social business. The maturity on this component of the social business engine varies from being a novice at identifying the right people within their networks to actively engaging them. In the initial levels, you put the efforts in finding and connecting with the right people in the target networks. You slowly start to follow them and their activities, interact with them in different ways to create some value in the process. But as you reach higher levels of maturity, you go beyond conversations and engage them with innovative content, and encouraging them to conduct commercial transactions. This happens as there is increased level of trust and also there is a sense of give-and-take between the people and you. At the highest level is the goal to influence and delight the people, coercing them to make or break habits, to the advantage of all involved.
Here are some top tips for getting it right with people-focus. Some of these are aligned with our Unified Experience Framework.
- Look beyond customers. Focus on People {customers, users, stakeholders, followers}
- Follow and be followed by the right people on your networks
- Enable people to change their behaviours
- Synchronise people’s online and offline behaviours
- Deliver unified experiences across multiple platforms and channels
- Cut out the noise and care for people’s voices and heartbeats
4. Create meaningful and engaging content
Curating, creating and innovating content is critical for the success of any social business. Curation of the content can happen when there is a value-add done by means of sharing it to relevant people and making changes to it. Social businesses can succeed when they could enhance the content and also innovate. Innovation with content can be done in many ways, based on the industry, size and nature of business. Essentially, businesses innovate when they create different types of content altogether. For instance, Apple created iBooks and gave power to small time authors who want to publish their books, quickly, easily and in a cost-effective manner. Many companies who have been traditionally printing books, started with digital publications. The content is still the same, but these companies innovated with different way of delivering it.
5. Social business goes beyond conversations
Engaging people on the networks with interesting content is key for social businesses, to start with. Also, encouraging people to be involved in meaningful conversations aligned to the business interests of the organisation is critical too. However, as the business matures, the focus needs to be to interactions leading to commercial transactions. Otherwise there is not much of a value-add for the business to be on the social networks. You should start to motivate people to do online transactions, review your products, recommend of their friends so that they become your customers too.
Hope you find the above points helpful in building your social business. As always, please feel free to drop in with your comments and suggestions. Until next post, ciao!
Tags: Apple, brand, business, content, engage, experience, habits, influence, Innovative, mantravadi, maturity, model, networks, Pardha, Pardha Mantravadi, people, Saradhi, SBMM, social, social business, social business engine, Social business maturity model, solutions, success, texavi
Posted in Behavior Modeling & Design, Business Analysis, Information Technology, Innovation, Social business, Social Technologies, User Experience | No Comments »
Friday, August 24th, 2012
“Markets are conversations” – this saying is absolutely relevant to the current times. No wonder social media nowadays is not optional for businesses anymore. Increasingly, more small and medium enterprises have been embracing social networks albeit a bit coerced by competition than willingly. However, not all of them who adopt the social business route are successful. A handful of them have found the right path, stuck to it and achieved success. That brings a valid question in our minds – how would you measure the success of the efforts in building a social business? Like the well-established SEI-CMM model, success in social business too depends on the capability and the maturity of the organisation. I came up with the Social Business Maturity Model, akin to the SEI’s CMM, but contextually aligned to social business’s focus areas and processes. This post touches upon the key aspects in assessing the efforts of the business, internally and the resulting output, externally.
Why to assess and measure the social efforts
It is evident that organisations are investing their efforts, resources, people and money into making their businesses socially successful. Irrespective of industry, size and domain, these companies have taken the social business journey. They have put in place various processes and are actively undertaking various activities towards the social initiative. There should be a way of assessing and measuring where an organisation is in the context of this social efforts and processes. Texavi’s Social Business Maturity Model(SBMM) would help you to assess how mature an organisation is in the continuum from Level 1 being an initial phase to Level 5, being the Optimising phase. The SBMM enables the small and medium businesses primarily, to understand what it takes at each phase of the Social Business journey and invest their resources and efforts accordingly.
Texavi’s Social Business Maturity Model – Overview
I thought about this SBMM framework, considering the internal and external facets of any organisation. These two perspectives are helpful to assess and analyse the resources,processes and efforts required internally to generate the desired results, externally. This SBMM framework, the levels, key focus areas and the maturity matrix are based purely on my understanding and views and I did not refer to any industry or academic source, for similarity or differences. Within each of the focus areas, the organisation’s is divided across 5 levels starting from Level1 : Start-up through to Level 5:Tune-up.
Social Business internal focus – What you can do
There is no doubt that companies have to focus on selling and marketing their products and services to improve their bottom lines. However, social businesses have to do much more than this. The focus has to shift from their products and services to enhancing their brand equity, which is a larger goal to accomplish. However this cannot be achieved overnight or with a magic wand, but done gradually. So, an organisation matures across the 5 levels in the SBMM to reach the stage where the focus is clearly on building their brand. In the same way, businesses traditionally focus on selling and advertising to their customers and they extend this behaviour to social media as well. On the social and professional networks too, companies use the tone of selling to customers. However, this needs to change to a tone of engaging people in meaningful conversations.
The key focus areas for the internal focus of the social businesses, as per the SBMM are:
- Business Focus
- Processes
- Delivery platforms & channels
- Activity on social media
The following diagram illustrates these points highlighting the key focus areas for an organisation to take care of, internally:
Social Business external focus – how you do
Marketing and communications are like the face of the organisation, presenting their view to the external world. Customers and users have always been the focus of organisations traditionally. However, with social media businesses now need to extend their reach beyond the customers to followers, friends and fans on the social networks. Also, for successful social businesses, content becomes a key strategic tool. As the organisation matures in its social business approach, they move from consuming and sharing the content to curating and creating engaging content. Messaging too gradually shifts from being interruptive to highly-contextual and personalised to the users.
The key focus areas for the external focus of the social businesses, as per the SBMM are:
- People
- Content
- Business Focus
- Messaging
The diagram given below presents the key focus areas that an organisation should take care of, externally:
I will try and continue my thought process on the Social Business Maturity Model in the next few posts. Also, on Texavi’s web site and White Papers, you can find more details on Texavi’s SBMM such as the Maturity Matrix and focus areas. Feel free to share your views and feedback on this post. Until next post, ciao!
Tags: business, capability, channels, CMM, content, conversations, engagement, Innovative, levels, mantravadi, Markets, matrix, maturity, messaging, model, Pardha, Pardha Mantravadi, people, platforms, processes, Saradhi, SBMM, SEI, social, social business, social media, solutions, texavi
Posted in Business Analysis, Information Technology, Product Development, Social business, Social Technologies, User Experience | No Comments »
Tuesday, August 21st, 2012
A few days ago, I was thinking about what separates the great organisations from the good ones. I tried to connect a few successful companies with the secrets behind their success. Here is a small question for you to get thinking on this..what is common to Google, Apple and simple? Of course the letters LE, but the prize goes to the correct answer, “their commitment to make people happy”. Google and Apple have positioned themselves as people-focused firms, creating innovative products and services that not only work for people but also delight them. They have established a clear differentiation based on delighting their customers, stakeholders and followers with simple and easy to use products and services. In this post, let us learn how any organisation which aims to become a social business, needs to focus on ‘the people’ to be successful.
Focus on people – Make them happy
Businesses traditionally have been focusing on people in one form or the other. Every organisation works hard to keep their customers happy as that would guarantee their existence. Some businesses focus on keeping their employees satisfied with good facilities, pay and perks.These companies think that happy employees lead to higher productivity and thereby better results. A few large organisations with deep pockets can afford to keep not only their customers and employees happy, but also extend their reach to the stakeholders like shareholders and suppliers. However, a social business needs to do all the above and a bit extra as well. Let us see in the next section what social businesses need to do to get it right.
Social business – Internal and external people
Social businesses have to optimise their business strategies, operations and resources towards the ‘people’. The people here means those who are both ‘internal’ as well as ‘external’ to the organisation. Internal people are the employees and other key stakeholders such as the management, sponsors and the shareholders. They are critical to the success of any initiative as everything starts with them, from the business vision to strategy, from planning to execution and delivery. External people refers to the customers and suppliers. However, in the context of social business, the list doesn’t end here. These external people include the followers, friends and fans on social and professional networks. Social businesses succeed by putting the people’s interests first beyond anything. Their business objectives and bottom lines are all dependent on their people-focus. Social businesses have to ensure that both the internal and external people are happy.Here is how they can achieve this. :
- Involve, encourage and empower the right teams
- Find, connect and follow the right people
- Educate, influence and engage your followers
In the following sections, let us see how the organisations can become effective following the above rules.
Involve, encourage and empower the right teams
Teams make or break your organisations initiatives and attempts for successful campaigns. Great teams often are one of the biggest success factors behind great social businesses. You need to involve the team members from the very beginning so that they none of the team members feel left out. Also, this would help build ownership in them and increases their responsibility. Encourage and motivate the team members to start delivering towards the goals of social business. Empower them to take decisions on their own, try new things and implement their ideas. No matter if the ideas are bad or good, let the team work on those ideas and realise the efficacy of these ideas, on their own. Empowering the teams enables the team to own up the social business initiative and deliver activities and succeed, all by themselves.
For successful social business, empower the team and allow them to:
- Estimate the efforts and timelines
- Come up with the plan
- Commit and agree upon the plans
- Deliver on the plans
- Bring out the problems, if any, during the execution
Find, Connect and follow the right people
Whereas the teams working on your social business are internal to your organisation, you also need to look outside of your business. These are customers, suppliers and others, speaking of traditional businesses. Often in the context of social business, this extends to those people in your social and professional networks. Follow these simple rules to follow the right people on your social and professional networks.
- Define the profiles of the people who fit your business requirements
- Create a persona with the demographics and psychographics
- Search, browse and look out for the people fitting in the persona
- Connect to these people and follow their activities on networks
- Interact with them by liking and favouriting their content
- Engage with the people by sharing their content across networks
Educate, engage and influence your followers
Following people on the social and professional networks, interacting with with them and sharing their content is one thing. It is quite another level to get people to follow you. Even harder is to engage people consistently with content that they are interested in. Of course, the most difficult step in the social engagement is to be able to influence your followers, friends and fans positively and increase their trust in you and your brand. The starting point for all of these accomplishments is to start sharing content which aligns with the interests of your followers. Make it worthy of their likes, and encourage them to comment upon and share it with others in their network. Influence your followers
Given below are some useful tips to help you with engaging your audience and influencing them.
- Identify the target audience from amongst your followers, friends and fans on networks
- Understand their interests and focus areas
- Align your campaigns and content to be aligned with their interests
- Interact with them, encourage people to like your content and share it
- Reach out to friends of friends (FoF) and widen your network reach
- Influence your followers to trust your brand and make them your ambassadors
Hope you find the above suggestions helpful in your social business efforts. As always, please let me know your views for improving this blog. Until next post, Ciao!
Tags: agile, Apple, business, customers, employees, empowerment, Facebook, fans, followers, friends, Google, happy, Innovative, LinkedIn, mantravadi, media, networks, Pardha, people, products, professional, Saradhi, services, simple, simplicity, social, solutions, suppliers, team, teamwork, texavi, twitter
Posted in Behavior Modeling & Design, Business Analysis, Information Technology, Innovation, Product Development, Social business, Social Technologies, User Experience | No Comments »
Monday, July 23rd, 2012
A recent report on social media by ACSI, American Customer Satisfaction Index puts Facebook behind other social networks such as Google+ and Pinterest on user satisfaction. Yes, going social is not enough anymore, nor is creating a Facebook page for your business, tweeting on a regular basis or having a LinkedIn profile. Successful businesses are no longer just about being active on social media, and collecting analytics on engagement and influence. Time has come to move beyond the fads and integrate your brand and reputation management activities to deliver congruent and unified experiences to customers and users. In this post, we will have a look at the various channels available for businesses and how these can be leveraged to successfully manage reputation in an increasingly competitive market.
1. ORM is not just managing ‘Online’ reputation
There are many different ways in which you can reach out to your customers and users. The evolution of the various channels and media can be considered as a continuum over the past decades or even centuries. From the times businesses have been used to traditional channels like print and word of mouth to today’s social media, communication and reputation/brand management channels championed the cause of businesses. Texavi created a framework that traces the various channels and also maps how easy or hard it is to implement each of these channels. The infographic given below provide a perspective on various channels such as traditional, digital, web, mobile and social platforms that contribute to the organisation’s reputation.
2. All channels are not the same
All channels don’t have the same flavour and they don’t behave in the same way. They vary in the way they are created, maintained and delivered through. For instance the traditional channels such as the print media might require initial installation and setup. On the other hand, the social channels such as social media networks like Facebook, Twitter accounts etc., need to be created, connected and integrated. These media differ on various aspects, each having its own set of characteristics and behaving in its own way. However, the real trick lies in how well you identify the right channels for your business and use them smartly. The following sections will help you in selecting this so that you will succeed at managing your organisation’s reputation.
3. Mix and match the channels for balance
Relying only on one channel at the expense of the other will only give negative results. That is why businesses need to focus on choosing the right mix of the channels and resources to manage their brand and reputation in a holistic manner. The above infographic also charts the evolution of these various channels/media and the ease of their implementation. Success in managing reputation in today’s world lies in identifying and using all the possible channels, based on the organisation’s expectations and experience. Also, note from the above infographic that the ease or difficulty in implementation could vary depending on industry, product, market dynamics and the specific organisation which is implementing it.
4. Get to know the critical factors
While some channels say, the print media could take longer time to implement whereas its comparatively quicker to create some others like web sites. Besides, other factors such as cost, resources required etc., could vary from one channel to another. You need to compare and contrast these various factors across the channels. I give below a list of some key factors that must be considered before you take any decision:
- Cost of implementation
- Speed of implementation
- Manpower required
- Materials and physical resources
The following framework provides maps the various channels on the cost vs. speed of implementation. You can see that there is a tradeoff and it is wise to choose the right channel(s) suitable for your industry, products and customers.
5. Don’t go by fads and trends
Just because everyone has a Facebook page, you don’t have to create one, unless your business really need one. Following latest fads will only leads you into frustration and confusion, as you don’t see the expected results coming out of them. Before adopting and implementing a programme, it is important that you carefully consider the past experiences, resources available and the expectations of your organisation. Also, keep in mind the critical factors like cost and time for the implementation of the selected channels. For an integrated, well-oiled reputation management initiative, I suggest that you should aim for a perfect balance by choosing the best among the available channels and media and using them in a unified manner.
Hope these tips help you in getting it right with your ORM initiatives. Please drop in your feedback and inputs for making our blog better. Until the next post, ciao!
Tags: ACSI, brand, business, channels, Facebook, GooglePlus, infographic, LinkedIn, mantravadi, media, online, ORM, Pardha, Pinterest, reputation, Saradhi, social, texavi, tips, twitter, Unified Experience, users
Posted in Business Analysis, Information Technology, Product Development, Social business, Social Technologies, User Experience | 1 Comment »
